Tadashi Sakai disclosed a wire lock in his U.S. Pat. No. 4,665,724 comprising a take-up unit enclosed a locking wire therein which can be drawn out against the biasing force of a spring and rewound by the biasing force. However, it has the following drawbacks:
1. When the dials of such a wire lock is rotated to its opening number, the locking member 17 or 35 should be first withdrawn from the combination lock 10 or 36 and then rewound by the spring biasing force, still causing inconvenience for the lock user.
2. It does not provide any mechanism for resetting a combination in the lock. It is therefore quite inconvenient for changing a lock combination since the lock must be disassembled and then reset a new combination.
The present inventor has found the drawbacks of a conventional wire lock and invented the present wire lock having wire automatically retracted into a lock casing when opening the lock.